Henrik Utvik: If carbon seize fails, it’s really massively unhealthy information for society as a result of a whole lot of the businesses that make the essential constructing blocks that we take with no consideration in a contemporary society received’t have the ability to function on the identical price stage with out it.
Shana Ting Lipton: That’s Henrik Utvik. And at the moment we hear the story of how his startup, Aqualung, is getting down to commercially scale its patented carbon seize and storage know-how [known as CCS] to help decarbonization in heavy trade and transport. I’m your host, Shana Ting Lipton, with PwC, and that is Voices in Tech, from our administration publication, technique+enterprise, bringing you tales from the intersection of technological acceleration and human innovation.
In 1996, Norway launched the world’s first large-scale industrial carbon seize and storage venture, demonstrating that CO2 may very well be faraway from a pure fuel manufacturing facility and injected right into a sandstone formation, the place it was saved beneath the North Sea. It was described as Norway’s moon touchdown. It’s typically touted as a CCS success story and continues to seize and retailer 1 million metric tons of CO2 from pure fuel yearly. But to place it into perspective, some scientists say we have to seize at the very least 5 billion metric tons of CO2 yearly by 2050 [to achieve the Paris Agreement’s target of net-zero GHG emissions by 2050].
Can CCS transfer the needle on this? It’s been hailed by some as one of the vital promising instruments for industrial decarbonization. But critics cite the large price of implementing it and query whether or not it may be scaled shortly sufficient to satisfy at the moment’s pressing carbon-reduction calls for.
Here’s Jürgen Peterseim, Director, Sustainability Services, PwC Germany.
Jürgen Peterseim: Carbon seize can have fairly a little bit of muscle in making a dent within the international emission curves. But we’ve to have a look at this type of from a twofold angle: one is the technical; one is financial. From a technical one, sure, it could possibly cowl many industries, energy-intensive industries. It can cowl the facility sector, the oil and fuel sector.
It’s necessary to say, although, that with fossil fuels being finite, it’s a transition know-how—a transition know-how, although, with a comparatively lengthy lifespan. If you begin constructing such a facility and function it, it’s going to be in operation for 30 to 40 years.
If you have a look at the financial angle, then CCS is just not a silver bullet, proper, since you’re competing inside every sector with completely different applied sciences. And which means carbon seize will play a task in some industries, whereas in different industries it’s going to be extra economical to make use of different options, like renewable electrical energy or the electrification of processes.
Lipton: CCS has been round for the reason that ’70s, when it was used for a distinct function: by the oil and fuel trade, to squeeze each final drop of fossil gas out of growing older wells by injecting them with captured CO2. And it’s honest to say it’s nonetheless tainted by that affiliation, with its opponents arguing that it offers oil and fuel a “Hail Mary” to proceed operations that needs to be phased out. Aqualung chief know-how officer and cofounder Henrik Utvik.
Utvik: Carbon seize has at all times, as an answer, suffered just a little bit from being seen as an enabler of oil corporations, however all types of commercial corporations—like, as an illustration, cement vegetation—additionally they have giant course of emissions that come from the precise industrial manufacturing course of itself they will’t actually handle with renewables. The large problem with making use of renewable power, as an illustration, to large-scale trade is that the economic plant has to supply one thing on a regular basis, and the power needs to be always out there. Otherwise, the price actually goes actually, actually excessive up, since a whole lot of the economics are primarily based on the utilization of the plant itself. These industries are known as hard-to-abate as a result of they can’t use the intermittent power provide actually, equivalent to renewables. For occasion, the wind doesn’t at all times blow, and the solar doesn’t at all times shine.
Lipton: Aqualung Carbon Capture is hoping to speed up commercialization of CCS in hard-to-abate industries like cement and lime manufacturing, and in transport, by its adaptation to present CCS know-how.
Utvik: There are a number of major know-how choices for doing CCS. The most traditional ones are these spray chemical compounds. You mainly take a chemical that likes CO2, with water, and you then construct an enormous, large spray tower across the exhaust, and also you spray on this chemical, after which the CO2 form of falls down. Now, that is economically sustainable for very large-scale energy vegetation, however due to the price of constructing out these spray towers, it isn’t viable for industries equivalent to cement and metal. They don’t have the actual property, mainly, to put in them. In a few of these spray chemical initiatives, there was extra price as a result of that they had to purchase enormous extra items of land subsequent to the present web site, and rebuild giant components of the present web site as properly.
Lipton: Aqualung thinks it has a cost-effective resolution. The chemical spray methodology, which Utvik describes, is essentially the most mature of the CCS applied sciences and was used at Norway’s first carbon seize facility within the ’90s. Aqualung employs a distinct course of, the place CO2 is successfully filtered out on-site by scalable porous membranes. Aqualung took this membrane know-how and made it more practical by making use of a further component that’s stated to make the system altogether extra scalable, extra compact, and less expensive.
Utvik: Basically, membrane know-how are these mild, cylindrical filters, and you set them in a metallic field and also you stack a number of collectively, and you then transport them to the positioning, and also you simply construct them up like a Lego home.
Traditional membrane separation relies on pressurizing the fuel. Due to this enormous quantity of the fuel in an industrial setting, these membrane processes are fairly costly, significantly if you happen to evaluate them to the present value of CO2 [offsets]. We are taking these typical membranes and making use of what we name our particular sauce, which is a kind of coating that acts as CO2 magnets, after which scale that as much as be prepared for large-scale industrial functions. And the CO2 magnets considerably cut back power prices as a result of they decouple the CO2 seize from strain, and, then, after all, as a result of the entire know-how in membrane could be very, very compact, it considerably reduces complexity and value of set up as properly.
Lipton: Their particular sauce is what you may name an in a single day success that was 20 years within the making. It’s a part of the startup’s origin story, that takes us again to Trondheim, a fjord-side metropolis in central Norway.
Utvik: The know-how originates from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology [NTNU], which is the world chief in this type of area of interest subject of membrane separation, and significantly they’ve been researching varied methods of doing carbon seize for a lot of many years. By 2020, that they had optimized this recipe to make a membrane into form of a CO2 magnet and have been able to commercialize. At the identical time, myself and two of my enterprise companions had been concerned in a number of carbon seize initiatives, using present know-how. The initiatives had really a really, very exhausting time in getting off the bottom. We realized that the large worth in carbon seize actually was in making an attempt to take a extra early-stage, promising know-how to market. We contacted NTNU, and simply as they have been within the means of making an attempt to license and patent this know-how, we felt that we had the precise set of abilities—each from their analysis area data and [from] our data when it comes to growing and scaling up know-how, discovering the precise companions, discovering the precise clients on the proper time, and elevating cash.
Lipton: With enterprise curiosity in CCS rising, in 2021, Utvik cofounded Aqualung in Oslo, the place its analysis arm relies. Funding got here from a mixture of European authorities grants and, in 2022, a [US]$10 million fairness funding from strategic companions.
Utvik: We raised some seed funding from a consortium of traders, after which we attracted a set of companions that have been in form of the core goal markets—as an illustration, in lime, within the refineries, and in another kind of industries, corporations that have been potential end-users—and so they have been our major traders and backers. We additionally raised the capital from an enormous CO2 pipeline firm. In addition, we obtained grants from the Norwegian Research Council and likewise Horizon Europe, which is an enormous EU-funded grant mechanism. The EU have at all times been on the forefront of making mechanisms and incentives to help decarbonization and, to some extent, additionally carbon seize. The subject is that there’s, to date, not the good availability of cost-effective sequestration of the CO2 out there in Europe. The US is way more enticing due to its power value. [It] makes carbon seize generally extra viable and likewise, clearly, the supply and the event now of CO2 pipelines and geology for sequestering CO2 and using CO2 as properly.
Lipton: The US, the world’s quantity two CO2 emitter, has been paving the way in which for commercializing CCS applied sciences by many years of funding, by initiatives in addition to insurance policies. PwC’s fourth annual State of Climate Tech report cites the grants, incentives, and different funding choices out there beneath insurance policies such because the US Inflation Reduction Act as one cause local weather tech investments in North America have moved in the direction of tackling industrial emissions. Jürgen Peterseim.
Peterseim: Regulation is necessary to get CCS off the bottom, and there are completely different approaches internationally. In the US, for instance, we see a way more proactive strategy to CCS. We see initiatives being developed. We see pilot vegetation operational. There’s definitely regulatory help. In the European Union, it’s a bit extra difficult. I imply, till lately, we couldn’t even transport CO2 throughout borders. So that’s being modified now. At the tip of the day, we have to transport CO2 from energy-intensive industries throughout borders, in the direction of the storage services.
Utvik: The actual frontier of carbon seize, or the place it’s going to be deployed at scale, is basically the US. Aqualung has at all times been very, very US centered. I imply one of many unique founders of Aqualung had been very concerned within the power panorama within the US for a very long time. One of our focus areas from the start was to construct out the connection with the businesses that have been working pipelines and growing sequestration spots within the US, and tune our know-how to their wants—significantly in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana.
Lipton: The startup’s CEO relies within the US, the place he can proceed constructing these trade relationships. Utvik, who’s in London with the corporate’s scale-up group of engineers and take a look at rig, is concentrated on plant engineering and managing pilots.
Utvik: Our strategy has at all times been to pilot out within the trade and with the end-users that we’re going to work in the direction of at scale. We have 4 pilots on 4 completely different websites. The lime pilot in Sweden. We have a pilot for pure fuel boilers and generators within the southern US, the place you can ultimately take CO2 out from industrial processes and into lithium manufacturing. And then we’ve a pilot for waste to power in Germany. And we even have a take a look at rig that may go on a number of flue gases, which is at present located in London.
Lipton: This type of innovation appears to line up with one of many suggestions that emerged from the ultimate textual content of COP28 in 2023. It known as on nations to speed up abatement and elimination applied sciences—particularly citing carbon seize and storage.
Peterseim: Carbon seize applied sciences can be one piece of the decarbonization puzzle. And it’s going to be a related piece for sectors equivalent to cement or chemical compounds as a result of in these sectors we can’t abate 100% with out carbon seize.
Utvik: If carbon seize fails, it’s really massively unhealthy information for society as a result of a whole lot of the businesses that make the essential constructing blocks that we take with no consideration in a contemporary society received’t have the ability to function on the identical price stage with out it.
Lipton: Even after many years of analysis, there are nonetheless a number of challenges to beat to show this right into a viable industrial resolution, not the least of which is the urgency of at the moment’s local weather challenges and the timelines for commercializing CCS. Case in level: Aqualung’s goal for being manufacturing scale–prepared by 2026 or 2027. Henrik Utvik.
Utvik: Customers come and speak to us, and we are saying that we may be prepared to provide them perhaps in 2027, and so they say, “Already in 2027?” This feels like lengthy timelines, however really within the context of the trade of carbon seize, it’s really very, very quick. Because of the complexity of those initiatives, they should put the total worth chain collectively. So, Aqualung was based on the concept you want cross-collaboration between many various disciplines with a purpose to make successful. And we’ve utilized that considering additionally to our partnerships and to our additional growth—industrial growth—of the corporate.
Peterseim: For carbon seize to make a dent within the international emission curve, we’ll have to have a look at the whole ecosystem—that means the industries (cement, chemical, the transport sector) bringing the CO2 to the ultimate vacation spot; the finance sector, offering the required funding into this large-scale infrastructure; and the general public sector, to supply the regulation that these change into type of bankable investments. The ecosystem is more and more advanced, however no trade can remedy this alone, in order that they should collaborate to satisfy the Paris Agreement, with carbon seize taking part in a task in chosen industries.
Lipton: Thanks for listening, and keep tuned for extra episodes of Voices in Tech, delivered to you by PwC’s technique+enterprise.
